Penn Mutual Asset Management CIO Mark Heppenstoll focuses on the latest move by President Donald Trump to impose a 25% tariff on car imports into the US
Steelmaker Cleveland-Cliffs announced this week that it would ignite one of its production plants and fire around 600 workers, citing soft demand for steel used in automobile manufacturing.
Cleveland Cliffs said he would be firing about 600 employees this summer after he had put a portion of his Dearborn, Michigan plant in idle and called it “the current reality of weak car production in the United States.”
The company plans to temporarily idle the blast furnace, basic oxygen furnace steel shop and the ongoing foundry at Dearborn. The layoffs will take effect on July 15th.
“These actions will ensure that the company operates in a more efficient and more cost-competitive way than it is in the current market environment,” Cleveland Cliffs said in a statement. “We believe that once President Trump's policies are fully in effect and automobile production is back in stock, we should be able to resume steel production in Dearborn.”
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Cleveland-Cliffs said the layoffs were due to demand for the soft automotive industry for steel. (Getty Images/Dustin Franz via Getty Images/Bloomberg)
Cleveland Cliffs said he expects the Cleveland Works C6 Blast Furnace to be fully operational by mid-July after it was idled last year. It added that Dearborn will continue to run and support the ongoing employment of an additional 550 workers by adding a tandem cold mill of pickles and a continuous galvanizing line.
| Ticker | safety | last | change | change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| clf | Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. | 9.33 | +0.20 |
+2.25% |
The company's layoffs in Michigan follow an announcement that 630 Minnesota employees will ignite the mines at Minerka and Idl will fire some of the mining operations at Hibu. These layoffs begin in May.
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The freight train will carry steel to Cleveland Cliffs Inc., located at Cleveland Works Steel Mill. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
A letter from Robert H. Fisher, executive in human resources and labor relations at Cleveland Cliffs, was WDIO ABC He explained that he expects the layoff to be temporary.
“We cannot predict the length of those that could exceed six months,” the letter states.
The letter cited “decreasing demand for domestic steel” in 2024, as it contributed to the movement caused by the accumulation of excess iron ore pellet inventory.
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Cleveland-Cliffs stock has fallen by more than 13% in the past month, but has fallen by just 2.7% until 2019. That stock has risen more than 2% since mid-afternoon Thursday.
